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Savannah trailblazer one of first black Marines

Jesse Jackson, a 93-year-old Savannah native, came down from Plymouth, Mass., to visit his sister Mary Murray, left, to celebrate his birthday and the Fourth of July in Savannah.
Brittney Lohmiller/Savannah Morning News

Sergeant Jesse James Jackson, USMC, 92 years of age receives the Montford Point Marine Congressional Gold Medal, Thursday April 17,2014. At his White Cliffs neighborhood in Manomet among friends and family.
Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger

Brittney Lohmiller / Savannah Morning News - Jesse Jackson's younger brother, Charles Jackson, joined the Marine Corps in 1943 following in the Jesse's footsteps. Both Jesse and Charles joined shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and trained at Montford Point, a North Carolina base that was built to segregrate the Marines from 1942-1949.

ABOVE: Jesse Jackson, a 93-year-old Savannah native, was one of the first African-Americans to join the Marine Corps in 1942. Jackson spent four years in the Marines and became a drill instructor while serving. “They’ll make a man out of you,” Jackson said. “No matter your color.”

LEFT: Jackson was photographed in 1942 when he joined the Marines.

Photos by Brittney Lohmiller/Savannah Morning News

Brittney Lohmiller / Savannah Morning News -Jesse Jackson, 93-year-old Savannah native, was one of the first African-Americans to join the Marine Corps in 1942. Jackson was photographed in 1942 when he joined the Marines. Jackson joined the Marines shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and served for four years, two of which were served in combat.

Savannah native Jesse James Jackson retains a fierce pride in the U.S. Marine Corps he joined the year after Pearl Harbor on Dec. 8, 1942.

“I had to get into that place,” Jackson, 93, said Wednesday during a conversation at his sister’s home in Cloverdale. “They’ve got the prettiest uniforms. They were the toughest.”

But the military force he joined as one of the first black Marines was still segregated, and Jackson admits basic training was tough under white drill instructors at Montford Point, a site at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Then, two years ago, when about 400 of Jackson’s fellow

Montford Marines were recognized with the Congressional Gold Medal, he was left out because of an administrative error.

Jackson, dressed in a new uniform and white gloves, finally received his recognition during an April 17 ceremony in Plymouth, Mass., for being a “trailblazer” who helped to shape the new Marine Corps.

‘Toughest outfit’

Jackson was 19 when he joined the Marines and lied about having a high school diploma — he dropped out of school after the fifth grade. He spent the next four years in the Marines — half in the Pacific theater during World War II — before he left as a sergeant to pursue what he calls a successful business career in Boston.

“I knew it was the toughest outfit there was,” Jackson said of his decision to join the Marines. “I thought I was going to take over the joint, but nobody takes over the Marine Corps.”

During basic training, he said, black members of the Marines had to live in a tent-city in Montford just across the railroad tracks from the white Marines who lived in barracks.

“They didn’t treat us so well,” he said.

But segregation didn’t bother him, Jackson said.

“I’m dealing with people. People are great,” he said.

Eventually, Jackson himself would become a drill instructor.

“That was a tough job,” he said.

He stayed in the Corps for four years because it took that long to get a “hash mark” — a mark on the lower uniform sleeve representing good conduct.

“I had to be something,” Jackson said.

Now, he confesses, “You would have to give me $1 million to go into the Corps.”

After he left the Marines, Jackson embarked on a business career during which he “made a lot of money, a lot of money,” rubbed elbows with Boston’s best and enjoyed his life. He even bought a 1969 Cessna aircraft and learned to fly.

“Making money was my deal, and I did very well, very, very well,” Jackson said.

Home cooking

“This is my home,” Jackson announces when greeting his guests from the Savannah Morning News at his sister’s home recently.

“I came back to visit my sister. I was always two years older, you know.”

He turned 93 on June 29; his sister, Mary Murray, will turn 91 on July 8.

Murray lives with her daughter, Beverly Crawford, who works with Hospice Savannah.

A third sibling, Charles Jackson, followed Jesse into the Marines, also at Montford, Jackson said.

“He wanted to follow me just like brothers do,” Jackson said. “He wanted to be just like me.”

Charles Jackson left the Marines as a corporal. He died in 2001 at age 75.

Jesse Jackson left Savannah and his home at 520 W. Anderson St. at age 15, first for Brooklyn, N.Y., and later for Boston. He already had dropped out of school to go to work and make money — from selling kindling wood out of his red wagon to throwing the Savannah Evening Press, working at the fish market on then West Broad Street, now Martin Lither King Jr. Boulevard, and Red’s Sports Shop.

“That’s why I didn’t go to school,” he said.

USMC

Jackson said he was walking along a windy street in Chicago when he heard a plea to “send ships to (Gen. Douglas) MacArthur” and caught the bug.

President Franklin Roosevelt had banned racial discrimination by all federal agencies in 1941, and his directive allowed blacks to serve in the Marines the following year.

Jackson said he chose the Corps over the Army because of the uniform.

He became one of about 20,000 black Marines to go through Montford from 1942 to 1949.

When Congress voted to present Gold Medals to the Montford Marines, Jackson wasn’t included in the ceremony on Capitol Hill.

Congress initially created the award to acknowledge national recognition of distinguished achievements and contributions. For the award to be presented, it requires the votes of at least 290 House members and at least 67 Senators to send it to a committee for consideration. Recipients have included George Washington, Charles Lindbergh, Bob Hope, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, John Wayne, the Rev. Billy Graham, Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson and Pope John Paul II.

The oversight in the initial award ceremony was corrected when U.S. Rep. William Keating presented Jackson with the medal during the Plymouth ceremony in April.

President Obama sent a letter to be read at the ceremony in which he credited James and other black Marines with helping to advance civil rights and influence President Harry Truman to desegregate the military in 1948.

“People like Jesse, they changed history,” Keating said.

“They fought the war on two fronts. They fought the war of freedom for our country against fascist attacks.

“And they fought a war at home. … And they moved our country forward domestically as well.”

One of the people at the ceremony was Marine Maj. Sidney Calixte, a black Marine officer who noted Jackson’s role as a “trailblazer” who paved the way for his career.

Calixte took off one of his silver leaf major’s rank insignia and presented it to Jackson.

“The major gave his silver leaf,” Jackson recalled, adding that Calixte told him, “‘You paved the way for all of us.’”

Because of his height, Jackson said Calixte “couldn’t have been a Marine when I went in.”

Then the minimum height was 6 feet; Jackson was 6-feet 2-inches tall and weighed 180 pounds. He called himself “a big kid. I looked like I was 22.”

He said he simply lied about the high school requirement.

“They needed us,” he said.

The next step

Jackson said he retired to the White Cliffs Country Club — and its golf club — in Plymouth 30 years ago.

In his next move, Jackson said, he plans to return home for good.

He has picked a grave site at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery; his tombstone has been chosen.

He said he plans to be buried in the “brand new spanking (Marine) uniform” he got for the Gold Medal event.

“I know I’m going to get there. I figure by 95 I’ll be gone.

Until then, he remains upbeat and focused.

“My health is good. I look good, and I did the right thing. All I can say is God has been good to me. … I took 93 years to do it, but I did it.”

The (Quincy, Mass.) Patriot Ledger and the Wicked Local Plymouth in Plymouth, Mass., contributed to this report.